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LANDSCAPE  AND  FIGURE 
PAINTERS  OF  AMERICA 


BY 

FREDERIC  FAIRCHILD  SHERMAN 


NEW  YORK 
PRIVATELY  PRINTED 

MCMXVII 


Copyright,  1917 

by 

Frederic  Fairchild  Sherman 


TO  MY  WIFE 
JULIA  MUNSON  SHERMAN 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 


The  Landscape  of  Homer  Dodge  Martin  ....  3 

Robert  Loftin  Newman:   An  American  Colorist    .  13 

Blakelock's  Smaller  Landscapes  and  Figure-Pieces  23 
Some  Paintings  by  Albert  Pinkham  Ryder    .    .  .33 

An  American  Painter  of  the  Nude   43 

Elliott  Daingerfield   51 

Landscape  Painting 

Nature  and  Art   61 

Paint  and  Personality   64 

The  Real  and  the  Unreal   67 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


HOMER  DODGE  MARTIN 

Normandy  Trees  Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The  Lily  Pond   4 

The  Lone  Tree   4 

The  Sun  Worshippers   6 

ROBERT  LOFTIN  NEWMAN 

The  Wandering  Mind   14 

Mother  and  Child   16 

Magdalen   18 

Girl  Blowing  Bubbles   20 

RALPH  ALBERT  BLAKELOCK 

Indian  Madonna   24 

Going  to  the  Spring   24 

MooNRisE   26 

On  the  Plains   28 

The  Woodland  Road   28 

ALBERT  PINKHAM  RYDER 

The  Sheepfold   34 

The  Forest  of  Arden   34 

Noli  Me  Tangere   36 

Pegasus   38 


LILLIAN  M.  GENTH  ^^^^ 

The  Fount  of  Life   44 

The  Mountain  Stream   46 

The  Sun  Maiden   46 

Sunlit  Dell   46 

ELLIOTT  DAINGERFIELD 

An  Arcadian  Huntress   52 

The  Waters  of  Oblivion   54 

The  City  that  Never  Was   56 

Sunset — Mists  and  Shadows   56 

WINSLOW  HOMER 

Blown  Away   62 

ALEXANDER  H.  WYANT 

Sketch   64 

DWIGHT  W.  TRYON 

Dawn   66 

J.  FRANCIS  MURPHY 

Indian  Summer     ......•>.,  68 


THE  LANDSCAPE  OF  HOMER 
DODGE  MARTIN 


LANDSCAPE  AND  FIGURE 
PAINTERS  OF  AMERICA 


THE  LANDSCAPE  OF  HOMER 
DODGE  MARTIN 

THE  work  of  no  American  painter  of  landscape 
more  certainly  requires  an  intimate  acquaint- 
ance for  its  full  enjoyment  or  more  fully  repays  one 
for  a  painstaking  study  of  its  various  manifestations 
than  that  of  Homer  Dodge  Martin.  Inness,  who 
was  unquestionably  a  greater  master,  in  all  the  wide 
range  of  his  product  never  but  once  or  twice  touches 
one  so  nearly.  Wyant,  who  was  more  closely  akin 
temperamentally,  touches  one  oftener  though  never 
so  nearly  nor  so  deeply.  His  was  also  a  poetic  in- 
terpretation of  nature  notable  for  its  refinement  in 
the  same  sense  as  Martin's;  his  vision,  however,  was 
much  more  limited  than  either  Martin's  or  Inness's 
and  he  was  obviously  incapable  of  developing  the 
larger  aspects  of  a  theme  as  they  did. 

Wyant  and  Martin  were  both  poets  in  landscape; 
Wyant  is  lyrical,  Martin  epic  in  his  product.  One 
may  prefer  the  one  or  the  other,  but  of  relative  value 

3 


of  the  work  of  the  two  there  can  be  no  reasonable 
difference  of  opinion.  Inness  and  Wyant,  the 
former  in  a  large  and  the  latter  in  a  smaller  way, 
are  both  emotional  painters.  Martin  is  consciously 
intellectual.  He  selected  his  subjects  with  so  com- 
prehensive a  knowledge  of  their  adaptability  to  his 
needs  and  with  so  delicate  an  appreciation  of  their 
possibilities  for  the  expression  of  his  moods  that 
one  of  his  closest  friends  once  said  that  his  finest 
canvases  looked  as  if  no  one  but  God  and  he  had 
ever  seen  the  places  pictured.  Wyant  and  Inness 
painted  more  nearly  whatever  happened  to  excite 
their  emotion.  That  the  emotions  of  the  latter 
were  of  many  kinds  and  those  of  the  former  of  but 
few  explains  the  variety  in  the  product  of  the  one 
that  is  lacking  in  that  of  the  other.  Wyant's  paint- 
ings are  full  of  sentiment  of  a  very  exquisite  sort, 
tender  but  too  serious  ever  to  even  approach  sen- 
timentality. Inness's  are  charged  with  much 
stronger  feeling  but  seldom  so  finely  felt  if  invaria- 
bly more  ably  expressed.  Indeed,  both  Wyant  and 
Martin  express  more  successfully  the  rarer  as- 
pects of  nature  and  Inness's  pre-eminence  rests  upon 
the  variety  of  his  achievement  and  the  high  average 
of  its  excellence  rather  than  upon  any  superior 
ability  in  the  matter  of  expression.  Inness  is  too 
fully  engrossed  in  the  reproduction  of  the  actual 
appearances  of  things  to  bother  with  their  spiritual 

4 


Homer  D.  Martin:   The  Lily  Pond 

Collection  of  Frederic  Faircliild  Sherman 


Homer  D.  Martin:    The  Lone  Tree 

Montclair  Museum  of  Art 


significance,  so  that,  however  masterly  his  pictures 
of  peace  or  of  storm,  the  full  meaning  of  the  scene 
is  seldom  felt  in  his  rendering  of  it.  Martin  on  the 
other  hand  never  fails  to  make  one  keenly  conscious 
of  the  loneliness  and  utter  desolation  of  certain 
places  nor  Wyant  of  the  pensive  charm  of  others. 
In  Inness  we  admire  a  wonderful  faculty  for  the 
presentation,  in  a  large  way  and  with  unsurpassed 
truth,  of  nature  in  her  many  moods,  while  in  Mar- 
tin and  Wyant  it  is  the  expression  of  these  varying 
moods  through  their  interpretations  of  nature,  a 
much  more  delicate  and  difficult  accomplishment, 
that  impresses  us  most  forcibly. 

That  you  will  find  the  figure  in  many  of  Inness's 
finest  canvases,  admirably  placed  and  beautifully 
suggested,  while  it  practically  never  appears  in  the 
pictures  of  Martin  or  Wyant,  signifies  nothing  if 
not  that  Inness  felt  the  need  of  it  as  they  never  did 
in  the  rendering  of  pure  landscape.  Wyant  often 
introduced  cattle  and  sheep  in  his  compositions,  but 
Martin  practically  never  did  and  in  the  best  of  him 
one  will  find  no  living  thing  to  divert  howsoever 
slightly  one's  attention  from  whatever  mood  is  ex- 
pressed or  to  detract  in  the  least  from  the  feelings 
it  is  sure  to  arouse. 

To  Homer  Martin  the  look  of  the  land  with  its 
accompaniment  of  sky  was  sufficiently  expressive 
to  make  the  addition  of  anything  extraneous  unnec- 

5 


essary  to  an  adequate  realization  of  the  spirit  of  a 
place  and  a  full  rendering  of  its  suggestion  either 
of  peace,  loneliness,  gladness,  desolation  or  what- 
ever motive  its  particular  aspect  might  embody. 
While  it  is  true  that  he  includes  in  some  of  his 
most  important  canvases  a  deserted  house,  an  ivy- 
covered  church,  a  light  by  the  sea,  it  will  be  noted 
that  they  are  very  much  a  part  of  the  landscape 
in  every  instance  as  well  as  expressive  in  them- 
selves of  the  very  moods  embodied  in  the  scenes  of 
which  they  are  a  part.  Martin  is  at  his  best,  how- 
ever, in  such  works  as  The  Sun  Worshippers,  On- 
tario Sand  Dunes,  Westchester  Hills,  Adirondack 
Scenery,  and  the  others  that  are  landscapes  pure 
and  simple,  in  which  is  no  visible  evidence  of  man 
or  of  man's  work.  There  are  no  finer  interpreta- 
tions of  the  moods  of  nature  in  the  whole  of  Ameri- 
can landscape  art  and  their  sentiment  is  inescapable. 

His  range  in  the  selection  of  subject  is  deliber- 
ately restricted  as  his  interest  was  confined  entirely 
to  such  themes  as  offered  a  satisfactory  means  for 
the  expression  of  those  moods  of  nature  which  cor- 
responded most  nearly  to  his  own,  and  of  which 
his  intimate  understanding  made  him  a  masterly 
interpreter.  He  does  not  attempt  difficult  perfor- 
mances in  oil  painting  to  convince  one  of  his 
mastery  of  the  medium;  in  all  his  product  nothing 
may  be  found  that  approaches  the  dramatic  in  ac- 

6 


tion  or  intensity,  but  perhaps  no  landscape  painter 
has  ever  expressed  such  depth  of  feeling  as  is  evident 
in  his  finest  works;  and  one  v^ill  look  far  to  find 
anything  finer  in  the  v^ay  of  mere  painting  than 
certain  pictures  of  his  like  The  Harp  of  the  Winds 
or  The  Sun  Worshippers. 

One  realizes  in  Martin's  handling  of  a  subject 
an  unerring  instinct  for  the  inevitable  evidenced  in 
just  such  a  proportionate  sacrifice  of  unnecessary 
detail  and  personal  viewpoint  as  emphasizes  prop- 
erly its  particular  significance.  In  several  of  his 
subjects,  of  which  there  are  variations  executed  at 
considerable  intervals,  such  as  the  Sand  Dunes, 
Lake  Sanford  and  the  Adirondack  Scenery,  which 
undoubtedly  derives  from  the  Headwaters  of  the 
Hudson,  this  process  of  elimination  and  refinement, 
the  calculated  cutting  away  of  insistent  trivialities 
and  insistence  upon  the  primitive  and  elemental 
meanings  of  the  landscape,  is  patent. 

I  think  one  may  find,  without  great  effort,  sug- 
gestions in  Martin's  work  of  his  predilection  for 
poetry  and  music  and  his  reaction  to  the  best  of 
both,  for  certainly  if  the  Harp  of  the  Winds  is 
not  musical  you  will  find  no  music  in  landscape 
art  any  more  than  you  will  find  poetry  there  if  not 
in  the  Old  Manor  House.  His  Andante:  Fifth 
Symphony,  painted  with  the  exquisite  strain  of  that 
air  ringing  in  his  ears,  is  a  notable  evidence  of  his 

7 


cultivated  taste  in  music,  the  like  of  which  is  not  to 
be  found  elsewhere  in  landscape  painting,  and  it  is 
surely  not  presumptuous  to  assume  in  other  canvases 
intimations  of  poetic  origin;  at  any  rate,  it  is  im- 
possible to  look  upon  certain  of  his  masterpieces 
without  a  new  understanding  of  that  love  for  the 
odes  of  Keats  which  led  him  sometimes  to  recite 
them,  so  truly  do  we  feel  the  haunting  melancholy 
of  that  immortal  verse  in  his  work. 

Not  many  artists  among  his  contemporaries  were 
equally  cultivated,  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that 
La  Farge,  who  was  the  most  distinguished  of  those 
that  were,  was  one  of  Martin's  few  friends.  That 
the  small  talk  of  the  studios  had  no  interest  for  him 
is  the  only  possible  explanation  of  his  lack  of  com- 
rades in  them,  for  he  was  a  man  whom  men  es- 
pecially found  lovable.  I  imagine  much  of  the 
time  his  fellow  artists  spent  together  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  problems  of  oil  painting  Martin  must 
have  spent  steeping  himself  in  thoughts  that  are  too 
deep  for  words,  pondering  the  memories  of  half- 
forgotten  airs  or  "soaking  in"  the  beauty  of  some 
immortal  verse,  and  this  difference  in  the  use  to 
which  he  put  his  idle  moments  is  plainly  to  be  seen, 
I  think,  in  the  kind  of  thing  one  finds  in  his  pic- 
tures— not  fine  painting  for  its  own  sake,  spectac- 
ular scenery  for  the  sake  of  effect,  or  dramatic  skies ; 
not  improvisations  in  color  nor  interesting  studies 

8 


in  chiaroscuro,  but  certain  inescapable  intimations 
of  the  important  fact  that  "the  poetry  of  earth  is 
never  dead/^ 


9 


ROBERT  LOFTIN  NEWMAN:  AN 
AMERICAN  COLORIST 


ROBERT  LOFTIN  NEWMAN:  AN 
AMERICAN  COLORIST 


ROBERT  LOFTIN  NEWMAN  was  bom  in 
Richmond,  Virginia,  in  1827  and  went  with 
his  parents  to  Tennessee  when  he  was  eleven  years 
old.  His  family  must  have  been  reasonably  well- 
to-do  people  at  the  time,  for  it  is  recorded  that  as 
a  youth  he  read  a  great  deal  about  art.  He  prob- 
ably painted  some,  too,  for  when  he  was  but  twenty- 
three  he  went  to  Europe  with  the  intention  of  study- 
ing at  Diisseldorf.  He  stopped,  however,  in  Paris 
instead,  and  entered  the  atelier  of  Thomas  Couture, 
where  he  remained  but  a  few  months.  This  was  all 
the  instruction  in  art  he  ever  received.  After  re- 
turning to  his  home  in  Tennessee  he  made  a  second 
trip  to  Paris  in  1854,  and  it  was  then  that  he  made 
the  acquaintance  of  William  M.  Hunt,  who  in  turn 
introduced  the  young  artist  to  Millet. 

To  Newman  belongs  the  credit  of  having  been 
one  of  the  earliest  to  appreciate  as  well  as  one  of 
the  first  to  purchase  Millet's  work.  He  bought 
Le  Vanneur  and  several  other  canvases,  which  he 
later  sold,  through  necessity,  certainly  not  from 

13 


choice,  as  they  must  have  been  the  most  prized  of 
his  possessions,  as  one  will  infer  from  even  a  slight 
familiarity  with  Newman's  own  work,  in  which 
not  a  little  of  the  sentiment  as  well  as  the  best  of 
the  color  reveals  a  remarkable  sympathy  with  that 
which  is  inevitably  associated  with  the  art  of  the 
great  Frenchman.  This  does  not  imply  that  New- 
man's painting  is  anything  other  than  individual 
and  delightful  in  its  own  way,  which  it  certainly 
is,  but  in  a  measure  it  helps  to  indicate  what  ten- 
dencies determined  the  development  of  his  art, 
what  his  ideals  really  were  and  how  nearly  he 
eventually  succeeded  in  realizing  them  in  his 
canvases. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  Newman  was 
employed  by  the  Confederate  Government  as  a 
draughtsman  and  in  1864  he  saw  some  active  service 
as  a  member  of  the  i6th  Virginia  Infantry.  How 
true  it  is  that  he  is  exclusively  an  idealist  and  a 
painter  of  ideas,  interested  only  in  some  personal 
and  rare  interpretation  of  religion,  history  or  life, 
or  some  original  creation  of  his  own  imagination, 
may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  there  is  no 
record  in  his  art  of  his  ever  having  been  to  Paris 
nor  yet  of  his  ever  having  been  a  soldier. 

For  years  after  the  surrender  of  Lee  left  him  free 
to  return  again  to  his  easel  he  worked  in  a  com- 
parative obscurity  that  we  must  presume  was  any- 

14 


Robert  Loftin  Nevvman  :    The  Wandering  Mind 

Collection  of  the  late  Sir  William  I'aii  Home,  Montreal 


thing  but  unsatisfactory  to  one  of  his  naturally  re- 
tiring dispositions,  especially  as  his  pictures  were 
highly  esteemed  by  a  few  men  and  women  of  culti- 
vation and  taste  who  quietly  collected  them  during 
all  this  time.  The  interest  and  encouragement  of 
such  purchasers  as  came  to  take  away  his  canvases, 
fellow  craftsmen  like  Wyatt  Eaton  and  William 
M.  Chase,  literary  celebrities  like  Richard  Watson 
Gilder,  and  connoisseurs  like  Sir  William  Van 
Home  and  Thomas  B.  Clarke  must  have  meant  in- 
finitely more  to  him  than  the  popular  approval  of 
a  general  public  that  was  satisfied  with  the  land- 
scape of  the  Hudson  River  School  and  the  figure 
paintings  of  J.  G.  Brown. 

Not  until  1894,  when  he  was  sixty-seven  years 
old,  was  any  public  exhibition  of  Newman's  work 
ever  held.  At  that  time  a  collection  of  upward  of 
a  hundred  of  his  paintings,  mostly  loaned  for  the 
occasion,  was  arranged  by  a  committee  of  the  artist's 
friends  and  hung  in  a  New  York  gallery.  That  he 
was  practically  unknown  at  the  time  even  in  the 
city  where  he  lived  and  worked  is  evident  from  the 
statement  in  the  Evening  Post's  account  of  the  exhi- 
bition, that  "his  works  are  never  seen  in  the  art  gal- 
leries, nor  yet  in  the  sales  which  occur  at  frequent 
intervals."  The  Post  and  the  Tribune,  both  of 
which  reviewed  the  exhibition  at  length,  speak 
highly  of  the  artist  particularly  as  a  colorist,  the 

IS 


latter,  in  mentioning  a  hunting  scene  and  a  religious 
subject,  saying  that  ^'in  pictures  like  these  Mr. 
Newman  is  one  of  the  haunting  masters  of  color." 
From  a  report  published  in  the  Times  about  a  week 
after  these  reviews  appeared,  we  learn  that  the  pic- 
tures ^'are  finding  favor  with  buyers,"  which  prob- 
ably means  that  several  were  sold  besides  the  one' 
which  the  newspaper  report  adds  was  purchased 
by  the  painter,  Alexander  Harrison.  From  the 
date  of  this  exhibition,  which  was  perhaps  the  great 
event  in  Newman's  quiet  life,  until  that  March  day 
in  1912  when  he  was  found  dead  in  his  studio  in 
New  York,  he  seemingly  never  again  emerged  from 
the  utter  obscurity  in  which  he  lived,  and  in  his  old 
age,  as  in  his  youth,  it  was  the  loyalty  and  help  of  a 
few  true  friends  and  discerning  judges  of  painting 
that  enabled  him  to  purchase  the  necessities  of  a 
life  of  singular  devotion  to  a  fine  ideal  in  art  that 
has  never  been  rightly  estimated  or  properly  ap- 
preciated. 

That  Newman  was  a  great  colorist  in  the  best 
sense  is  evident  in  all  of  his  finished  work,  and  few 
who  are  acquainted  with  it  would  agree,  I  think, 
with  the  critic  who  wrote  that  "you  feel  that  his 
imaginative  conceptions  were  arrested  on  their  way 
into  concrete  images  by  a  flow  of  light  and  color 
too  bewitching  to  let  the  constructive  faculty  of  the 
artist  have  free  play,"  for  certainly  the  "obscurity 

16 


Robert  Loftin  Newman:    Mother  and  Child 


in  details,"  which  this  critic  remarks,  is  nothing  if 
not  deliberate,  a  conscious  sacrifice  of  definition 
in  particulars  for  the  perfect  realization  of  that 
mysterious  and  poetic  charm  of  color  which  is  their 
chief  delight.  His  color  has  a  loveliness  entirely 
due  to  spontaneous  feeling,  and  in  many  of  the  pre- 
sumably so-called  obscure  canvases  it  is  developed 
with  all  the  loving  and  painstaking  care  that  an- 
other artist  might  have  lavished  on  the  drawing  of 
a  figure,  and  simply  because  he  realized  that  it  was 
a  surer  means  for  the  expression  of  what  he  had 
to  say  than  any  further  development  of  the  more 
obvious  detail  could  be.  In  some  of  his  canvases 
the  very  indefiniteness  of  the  no  less  necessary  de- 
tail is  readily  recognized  as  being  a  condition  in- 
evitable to  their  success,  inasmuch  as  their  intention 
is  the  suggestion  of  some  elusive  sentiment  or  an 
expression  of  feeling  rather  than  any  actual  repre- 
sentation of  the  reality  of  things,  however  lovely. 

In  all  his  pictures  it  is  the  poetry  of  color  and  of 
life  rather  than  the  prose  that  one  finds,  and  in  the 
sense  that  poetry  is  the  higher  form  of  expression 
it  may  be  said  that  he  is  a  greater  artist  than  some 
of  his  contemporaries  who  are  unquestionably  su- 
perior painters.  However  much  of  a  poet  New- 
man is,  it  is  quite  true  that  he  is  never  the  master  of 
the  poetry  of  art  that  Millet  is  of  the  prose.  Mil- 
let's prose  is  generally  perfect  in  a  way  that  New- 

17 


man's  poetry  often  is  not,  and  yet  the  imperfect 
beauty  of  much  of  Newman's  painting  has  a  very 
real  charm.  It  is  an  elusive  charm,  though,  and 
is  easily  missed  unless  one  is  peculiarly  sensitive 
to  the  sensations  of  color  and  to  the  suggestion  of 
forms  used  merely  as  symbols  in  a  manner  of  ex- 
pression somewhat  similar  to  that  of  not  a  little  of 
the  sculpture  of  Rodin.  A  representative  example 
of  this  phase  of  Newman's  work  is  the  little  picture, 
in  the  collection  of  the  late  Sir  William  Van  Home, 
called  The  Wandering  Mind,  where  the  figure, 
though  crudely  drawn,  is  a  most  suggestive  as  well 
as  an  entirely  adequate  interpretation  of  a  vitally 
interesting  idea.  Further  development  of  the  de- 
tail in  this  canvas,  or  indeed  anything  in  the  way  of 
more  finished  drawing,  could  hardly  add  at  all  to 
the  tragic  force  of  the  picture  as  it  stands.  One 
might  suppose  that  the  character  of  the  subject  in 
this  instance  partly,  if  not  wholly,  accounts  for  the 
success  of  the  painting,  and  it  is  quite  true  that  there 
is  something  in  the  association  of  ideas  that  makes 
the  awkward  figure  peculiarly  suggestive  and  ap- 
propriate. There  are  other  works  by  Newman, 
however,  where  the  detail  is  quite  as  obscure  and  the 
drawing  quite  as  crude,  that  are  just  as  forcible  in 
their  presentation  of  other  and  less  unhappy  sub- 
jects. The  small  Magdalen  in  the  same  collection 
is  one  of  them.    The  artist  has  painted  her  praying, 

i8 


Robert  Loftin  Newman:  Magdalen 

Collection  of  the  late  Sir  ll'iHiain  Van  Home,  Montreal 


and  it  is  the  pose  that  makes  the  picture,  as  an  artist 
would  say.  And  yet  here,  as  in  the  other  canvas,  an 
unusual  but  no  less  beautiful  and  suggestive  color 
scheme  is  a  powerful  factor  first  and  last  in  the  ef- 
fectiveness of  what  is  a  spiritual  or  imaginative 
rather  than  an  actual  and  realistic  interpretation. 

The  picture  of  the  Mother  and  Child,  one  of  his 
last  works,  dated  1902,  proves  that  he  was  an  ac- 
complished draughtsman  and  an  intelligent  techni- 
cian in  other  ways  when  it  suited  his  purpose. 
This  canvas  is  as  fine  a  representation  of  a  subject 
so  often  painted  as  one  will  be  likely  to  find  in  mod- 
ern art.  The  figures  are  very  happily  arranged 
and  the  expression  in  the  faces  is  so  finely  felt  and 
expressed  that  the  entire  poem  of  the  mother's  love 
and  the  child's  response  is  fully  evident;  while  the 
golden  curls  and  rosy  cheeks  of  the  baby  against 
the  black  hair  and  cooler  tones  of  the  mother's  face 
emphasize  that  charm  of  color  which,  like  a  lovely 
music,  is  the  accompaniment  to  this  song  of  life. 
The  canvas  is  as  exquisitely  finished  as  are  some  of 
those  rare  figures  of  Rodin's  which  exhibit  a  similar 
though  perhaps  greater  degree  of  technical  pro- 
ficiency in  a  sculptor,  who  quite  as  generally,  for 
the  sake  of  emphasizing  the  ideas  he  wishes  to  ex- 
press, is  accustomed  to  neglect  many  if  not  all  of 
the  little  niceties  of  art. 

In  the  Girl  Blowing  Bubbles  it  is  again  alto- 

19 


gether  an  unusual  and  interesting  color  scheme  that 
emphasizes  the  idea  of  mystery  which  is  suggested 
by  the  enveloping  shadows  and  the  inarticulate  curi- 
osity of  the  watching  dogs.  This  is  a  finished  work 
of  art,  in  that  it  is  a  finished  piece  of  rich  and  satis- 
fying color;  the  figure  of  the  child,  the  green-cov- 
ered couch  on  which  she  rests  her  hand  and  the  two 
dogs  are  merely  sketched  in  sufficiently  to  serve  as 
notes  in  an  exquisite  color  harmony,  which  is  at  once 
attractive  to  the  last  degree  and  highly  expressive. 
To  have  insisted  upon  the  drawing  could  hardly 
have  added  to  the  beauty  of  the  canvas  and,  one 
feels,  might  have  resulted  in  the  sacrifice  of  much 
of  its  charm. 


20 


Robert  Loftin  Newman:    Girl  Blowing  Bubbles 


BLAKELOCK'S  SMALLER  LANDSCAPES 
AND  FIGURE-PIECES 


BLAKELOCK'S  SMALLER  LANDSCAPES 
AND  FIGURE-PIECES 

A LARGE  majority  of  the  best  of  Blakelock's 
paintings  are  those  of  the  smallest  dimen- 
sions. As  yet  these  masterpieces  in  miniature  hare 
never  received  the  attention  they  deserve.  If,  as 
seems  probable,  he  preferred  and  worked  more  nat- 
urally and  therefore  more  effectively  in  a  small 
area,  in  much  the  same  sense  as  we  may  say  that 
Inness  worked  in  the  compass  of  a  canvas  thirty  by 
forty-five  inches,  it  is  surely  necessary  for  us  to  know 
these  little  pictures  if  we  are  ever  to  appreciate 
fully  his  abilities.  They  will  acquaint  us  with  cap- 
abilities that  his  great  canvases  like  the  Pipe  Dance, 
the  Indian  Encampment  and  the  several  large 
Moonlights  have  not  already  made  familiar.  The 
faultless  drawing  and  the  fine  characterization  in 
the  Indian  Girl  and  Shooting  the  Arrow  will  be  a 
revelation  to  many,  as  will  also  the  exquisite  en- 
amel-like quality  of  color  and  of  finish  in  a  work 
like  the  Girl  with  the  Fan. 

Shooting  the  Arrow  is  a  poetic  interpretation  of 
a  phase  of  primitive  life  in  America  that  has  passed 

23 


away  forever.  The  arrangement  of  the  lighting  is 
very  notable.  The  Indian  brave,  clothed  only  in 
his  loin-cloth  and  poised,  with  bow  half-drawn,  in 
the  full  glow  of  the  setting  sun,  stands  out  in  high 
relief  against  the  shadowed  darkness  of  the  sur- 
rounding forest,  like  a  bit  of  Wedgwood  done  in 
the  colors  of  life — a  typical  and  unforgettable  figure 
from  an  heroic  past.  The  Indian  Girl  presents  an- 
other phase  of  primitive  life  with  similar  success. 
Sitting  on  her  heels  in  a  characteristic  attitude  and 
with  one  hand  playing  with  a  string  of  beads,  she 
is  an  almost  perfect  piece  of  idealism,  preserving 
the  pensive  charm  and  unstudied  grace  of  Indian 
girlhood.  The  feather  in  her  hair,  the  fillet  about 
her  forehead  and  her  robe  of  soft  tanned  skin  or- 
namented with  beadwork,  the  deer-skin  spread 
upon  the  ground  and  the  trinket  in  her  lap  are  all 
beautifully  indicated,  while  the  personal  element 
of  her  own  individuality  is  present  and  evident  in 
a  degree  unique  to  the  artistic  creation  of  genius. 

The  Indian  Madonna  in  the  collection  of  Mr. 
George  S.  Palmer,  illustrates  just  as  forcibly  Blake- 
lock's  ability  as  a  figure  painter.  Here  the  compo- 
sition is  so  simple  that  the  almost  monumental  dig- 
nity of  design  in  the  little  group  of  the  girl  and  her 
baby  is  apt  to  be  overlooked.  The  artist's  admir- 
able restraint  and  mastery  of  line  are  evident,  and  in 
addition  a  technical  method  exactly  adapted  to  the 

24 


perfect  rendering  of  a  subject  of  this  character  on  a 
canvas  of  this  size.  It  is,  indeed,  continually  sur- 
prising in  these  smaller  pictures  of  Blakelock's  to 
note  how  admirably  suited  his  method  in  every  in- 
stance is  to  the  character  of  the  subject  portrayed, 
a  fact  v^hich  is  not  always  true  of  the  larger  can- 
vases, as  one  will  gather  from  looking  at  even  so 
fine  an  example  as  the  Pipe  Dance.  This  large 
picture  is  one  of  his  most  famous  works  and  rightly 
so,  for  though  it  is  a  failure  in  some  ways  it  is  a 
splendid  failure,  and  in  other  ways  it  is  a  grand 
success.  In  it,  if  anywhere  in  American  art,  you 
may  read  something  of  the  epic  of  our  native  Indian 
and  you  will  look  in  vain  elsewhere  for  its  like  in 
our  art  so  far  as  the  heroic  cast  of  the  composition 
is  concerned. 

A  picture  that  comes  from  the  collection  of  the 
late  Dr.  Charles  M.  Kurtz,  formerly  Director  of 
the  Buffalo  Museum,  is  Going  to  the  Spring.  This 
young  girl  going  to  fill  her  jar  with  fresh  water, 
performing  a  common  daily  task,  translates  one  of 
the  prosaic  duties  of  life  into  poetry  no  less  noble 
because  of  its  homely  human  origin.  She  is  as 
graceful  in  her  movement  as  a  Tanagra  figure  and 
with  the  added  interest  for  us  of  being  seen  in  her 
natural  surroundings. 

Blakelock  is  the  only  American  painter  who  has 
adequately  rendered  on  canvas  Indian  life  in  this 

25 


country  as  it  was  prior  to  the  final  wars,  the  removal 
of  the  Indians  to  the  reservations  and  their  change 
from  savage  dress  and  customs  to  those  of  our  civili- 
zation. For  this  reason  if  for  no  other  a  consider- 
able part  of  his  production  can  never  be  a  negli- 
gible contribution  to  American  art.  Its  evident 
historic  interest  and  importance  is  sufficiently  great 
to  preserve  all  of  the  pictures  that  present  this  phase 
of  his  work.  Of  his  landscapes  and  moonlights 
there  is  but  little  doubt  that  the  unimportant  ex- 
amples will  cease  to  interest  our  collectors  as  they 
become  familiar  with  the  somewhat  limited  num- 
ber of  really  fine  ones.  Of  examples  of  large  size, 
sixteen  by  twenty-four  inches  or  over,  there  are 
relatively  few  of  the  first  quality.  It  is  apparent 
therefore  that  there  is  a  position  of  importance  in 
our  public  and  private  collections  awaiting  his 
master-pieces  in  miniature  and  that  that  man  will 
be  fortunate  indeed  who  may  possess  one  or  two  of 
the  best  of  them. 

It  has  been  said  and  truly  that  "Blakelock's  talent 
was  a  talent  of  pure  gold — but  a  small  one."  It 
would  seem  that  in  the  elaboration  of  some  of  his 
larger  pictures  he  had  often  to  hammer  it  very  thin, 
producing  a  pretty  piece  of  painting  that  is  not  con- 
vincing, or  to  mix  it  with  a  baser  metal,  producing 
perhaps  a  noble  canvas  like  the  Pipe  Dance,  which 
is  a  quite  atrocious  piece  of  painting.    This  is  not 

26 


true  of  his  smaller  pictures.  They  glow  with  all 
the  richness  of  pure  color  and  they  satisfy  one  as 
only  the  gold  of  genius  unalloyed  ever  can  or  will. 
The  space  is  sufficient  for  the  composition  and  the 
composition  fills  the  space ;  there  are  no  uninterest- 
ing passages,  no  empty  spaces,  nor  are  there  any 
that  are  crowded  with  unnecessary  and  meaningless 
detail.  Each  is  a  simple,  direct  statement  in  brief 
of  some  single  beautiful  thought,  some  one  fine  emo- 
tion, or  if  but  an  impression  yet  one  that  is  never- 
theless full  of  suggestion. 

The  Moonrise,  reproduced  herewith  from  a 
photograph  that  admirably  reveals  the  character- 
istic detail  in  a  painting  that  is  so  dark  in  tone  as 
to  require  specially  good  lighting  to  be  properly 
seen  at  all,  is  a  memorable  piece  of  the  pure  poetry 
of  night  with  just  that  touch  of  light  withal  that 
makes  of  it  a  thing  of  magic  like  the  moonlit  night 
itself.  Furthermore  it  is  a  distinguished  compo- 
sition, the  subtile  gradation  from  dark  to  light  in- 
evitably leading  the  eye  into  the  picture  and  em- 
phasizing the  beauty  that  is  there.  It  shows, 
through  a  tangle  of  woodland  trees,  between  two 
huge  boulders,  the  first  glow  of  the  rising  moon 
across  an  expanse  of  quiet  water.  This  little  panel 
together  with  many  other  of  the  masterpieces  of 
American  landscape  was  formerly  in  the  collection 
of  Mr.  Thomas  B.  Clarke. 

27 


Of  the  great  Moonlight,  now  in  the  Toledo  Mu- 
seum, probably  the  earliest  version  was  the  little 
painting  (No.  15  of  the  sale),  six  by  eight  inches, 
formerly  with  the  Toledo  canvas  in  Mr.  Catholina 
Lamberts  collection.  The  late  Mr.  John  N. 
Andrews  owned  another  and  in  the  William  M. 
Laffan  collection  there  was  a  fourth,  thirty-five  and 
a  quarter  by  fifty-five  inches,  engraved  by  S.  G. 
Putnam,  and  published  (1887)  in  the  book  of 
"Engravings  on  Wood"  by  members  of  the  Society 
of  American  Wood  Engravers. 

The  Golden  Afternoon  is  a  composition  that  the 
artist  repeated  many  times  with  but  little  variation 
upon  larger  canvases  and  seldom  with  anything 
comparable  to  the  sumptuous  beauty  of  its  render- 
ing in  this  instance.  Generally  in  the  bigger  pic- 
tures the  necessity  of  an  emphasis  in  the  breaking  up 
of  the  line  of  the  horizon,  by  the  introduction  of 
more  trees  at  intervals  not  always  happily  chosen, 
disturbs  the  balance  of  the  composition  and  ruins  its 
effect;  while  the  greater  area  of  sky  requiring  a 
diversity  of  interest  to  save  it  from  monotony  is 
robbed  of  much  of  the  beauty  and  richness  as  well 
as  all  of  the  simplicity  it  has  here. 

On  the  Plains  exhibits  in  a  space  but  four  and 
one-quarter  by  nine  and  one-eighth  inches  an  ex- 
panse of  prairie  that  successfully  impresses  the  spec- 
tator with  a  true  sense  of  its  vastness.    Further,  this 

28 


Ralph  Albert  Blakelock:    On  the  Plains 


Ralph  Albert  Blakelock:    The  Woodland  Road 
Collection  of  Mr.  John  F.  Degener,  Jr. 


tiny  canvas  illustrates  the  artist's  manner  of  making 
a  picture  out  of  the  simplest  material.  Here  a 
foreground  of  flat,  uninteresting  country,  a  group  of 
Indian  tepees  in  the  middle  distance  and  a  bit  of 
cloudy  sky  are  transformed  by  the  magic  of  mere 
paint  into  a  poem  of  the  prairies  in  which  their  im- 
mensity as  well  as  that  sense  of  loneliness  that  per- 
vades it  finds  complete  expression. 

An  interesting  example  of  a  little-known  phase  of 
Blakelock's  work  is  The  Woodland  Road  owned  by 
Mr.  John  F.  Degener.  In  this  canvas  the  color 
scheme  is  confined  entirely  to  a  range  of  greens  with 
which  he  manages  a  most  engaging  and  at  the  same 
time  very  precise,  if  not  quite  literal,  interpretation 
of  nature.  The  painting  was  but  recently  seen  in 
the  benefit  exhibition  in  New  York  and  introduced 
a  practically  unknown  expression  of  Blakelock's 
ability  as  a  landscape  artist.  In  it  one  realizes  a 
vigorous  response  to  the  actual  aspect  of  the  natural 
world  evidenced  by  masterly  draughtsmanship,  to- 
gether with  a  sensitive  recreation  of  atmospheric 
envelopment  that  accounts  for  much  of  the  basis  of 
truth  upon  which  he  built  the  lasting  beauty  of  those 
purely  imaginative  pictures  like  the  Toledo  Mu- 
seum Moonlight  and  the  Autumn  at  the  Buffalo 
Museum  which  are  more  truly  representative  be- 
cause more  evidently  characteristic.  This  wood- 
land interior,  however,  may  almost  be  said  to  rank 

29 


with  the  greatest  of  any  school  or  period.  The 
drawing  of  the  trees  at  least  reveals  a  knowledge  of 
their  anatomy  that  rivals  that  of  Rousseau  and  the 
recognized  masters.  Its  real  charm,  though,  has 
little  or  nothing  to  do  with  drawing  or  with  fact. 
It  is  inherent  rather  in  the  sense  of  sylvan  solitude 
it  so  subtly  conveys — a  suggestion  as  of  the  leafy 
haunts  of  fairy  folk  far  hidden  from  the  ways  of 
men. 


30 


SOME  PAINTINGS  BY  ALBERT 
PINKHAM  RYDER 


SOME  PAINTINGS  BY  ALBERT 
PINKHAM  RYDER 

ALBERT  RYDER'S  color  and  the  way  in 
which  he  uses  it  is  a  calculable  quantity  in  the 
genesis  of  his  paintings  just  as  truly  as  are  either  his 
conceptions  or  the  designs  in  which  they  are  em- 
bodied. One  may  estimate  quite  accurately  its  ac- 
tual value  in  relation  to  the  total  effect  produced 
by  any  and  every  picture  he  has  painted,  though 
of  course  it  cannot  be  mathematically  stated. 
Whether  the  picture  is  thoroughly  synthetic  in  its 
subtile  harmonization  of  delicate  shades  and  values 
or  whether  it  be  simply  a  masterly  piece  of  design, 
as  is  sometimes  the  case,  the  color  itself,  though  in 
the  former  instance  entirely  neutral  in  effect,  and 
in  the  latter  seemingly  as  negligible  as  that  of  a 
silhouette,  is  always  an  appreciable  equation  adding 
interest  or  meaning  to  the  composition.  His  color 
simply  as  color  embroiders  his  imaginations  with 
rhymes  as  perfect  as  the  rhythm  of  his  line,  and 
though  a  less  important  contribution  to  the  poetry 
of  his  product  than  the  design,  in  the  sense  that, 
one  may  say,  rhyme  is  not  a  necessary  part  of  poetry 

33 


in  that  some  of  the  noblest  is  written  in  blank  verse, 
it  is  yet  a  means  of  informing  it  with  an  added 
loveliness. 

Mr.  Huneker  in  one  of  his  brilliant  essays  has 
spoken  of  that  quality  of  the  old  masters  of  Italy 
which  Ryder's  color  suggests  at  times,  and  if  I  re- 
member aright  added  that  the  artist  deliberately 
sought  in  his  own  manner  to  emulate  the  beautiful 
coloring  that  adds  distinction  to  their  works.  He 
must  have  been  consciously  trying  to  work  out  a 
more  satisfactory  approximation  to  their  customary 
habit  when  he  undertook  the  little  panel  now  in  the 
Brooklyn  Museum  representing  a  lady,  full  length, 
in  a  landscape,  which  is  seemingly  done  entirely 
over  a  background  of  gold.  In  a  similar  method 
he  painted  two  panels  of  a  three-fold  screen  for  the 
late  William  M.  Laffan  which  has  now  been  broken 
up,  these  two  panels  and  the  center  one,  by  Homer 
Martin,  having  been  sold  separately.  The  color 
of  the  Italian  masters,  however  perfectly  suited  to 
the  ecstatic  elaboration  of  religious  allegory  though, 
is  hardly  that  which  harmonizes  with  our  present 
day  visualization  of  nature  or  of  life,  and  naturally 
therefore  he  never  very  nearly  approaches  them.  It 
might  have  been  otherwise  had  he  been  of  a  deeply 
religious  nature,  which  he  was  not,  or  more  hu- 
manly sympathetic  to  that  hint  of  divinity  within 
one's  self  which  generally  was  their  inspiration^ 

34 


Albert  P.  Ryder:    The  Forest  of  Arden 


Nevertheless,  one  of  his  noblest  creations  is  a  re- 
ligious subject,  the  Noli  Me  Tangere,  and  though 
it  has  little  or  nothing  in  common  with  any  early- 
picture  of  the  scene,  it  surpasses  most,  if  not  all,  of 
them  in  an  elevation  of  imaginative  mysticism  that 
distinguishes  it  among  the  masterpieces  of  religious 
art.  He  has  painted  the  Christ  as  a  suspended 
spirit  visible  in  human  form  and  clothed  in  the 
cerements  of  the  grave,  the  very  color  of  the  flesh 
emphasizing  the  impression  of  the  body  of  one 
newly  arisen  from  the  dead.  The  old  masters  pic- 
tured His  a  living  presence  in  this  incident,  the 
measurable  weight  of  which  is  supported  by  feet 
firmly  set  upon  the  earth.  Ryder  has  succeeded  in 
conveying  more  convincingly,  at  least  to  the  world 
of  today,  the  essential  spiritual  significance  of  the 
scene. 

In  such  a  painting  as  the  Marine  owned  by  Mr. 
Montross  the  value  of  the  color  in  a  composition 
notable  rather  for  its  design  is  very  evident.  It 
pervades  the  picture  with  a  glamour  as  of  the  night 
at  sea  and  puts  one  en  rapport  with  this  epic  of  the 
ocean  as  surely  as  the  noble  rhythm  of  the  line  em- 
phasizes the  movement  of  the  waves  which  it  in- 
evitably suggests.  However  little  there  may  be  of 
any  resemblance  to  reality  either  in  color  or  in 
drawing  in  such  a  canvas,  it  is  no  less  a  penetrating 
interpretation  of  the  might  and  majesty  of  the  sea 

35 


and,  like  a  vivid  dream,  more  moving  than  any 
memory  of  the  ocean  is  ever  likely  to  be.  In  the 
canvas  called  The  Sheepfold,  recently  presented  by 
Mr.  Augustus  A.  Healy  to  the  Brooklyn  Museum, 
it  is  the  pigment  again  that  stamps  the  painting  with 
the  authority  of  a  masterpiece  in  that  it  approxi- 
mates in  both  color  and  intensity  so  nearly  the  ac- 
tual effect  of  the  moonlit  night,  recreating  in  a 
magical  way  the  vibrating  mystery  that  constitutes 
its  essential  charm.  The  huddled  group  of  sheep 
instinctively  drawn  together  by  the  dark  and  the 
lighted  window  of  the  farmhouse  near  by  indicat- 
ing the  gathering  of  the  family  therein,  give  the  pic- 
ture an  extra  human  interest  and  lend  it  a  meaning 
associated  with  life  that  brings  its  beauty  home  to 
all.  The  poetry  of  the  moonlight,  the  shadows 
of  the  trees  against  the  glowing  skies,  the  silence  and 
the  solitude  of  the  night,  it  is  reasonable  to  say  are 
made  evident  to  all  by  this  vital  human  touch. 

Ryder's  astonishing  ability  as  a  draughtsman,  his 
unerring  instinct  for  the  very  lines  of  truth  in  draw- 
ing horses,  sheep  and  other  animals  as  well  as  do- 
mestic fowls  and  birds,  is  seen  in  many  canvases  in 
which  they  are  the  chief  if  not  the  only  interest. 
His  horses  are  as  fine  as  Gericaulf  s  and  his  sheep 
as  fine  as  Jacque's  when  he  wishes  them  to  be.  No- 
where else  in  art,  sculpture  or  painting,  I  think,  will 
one  find  anything  more  tragically  beautiful  or  more 

36 


Albert  P.  Ryder:    Noli  Me  Tangere 

Collection  of  Mr.  N.  E.  Montr oss 


poignantly  pathetic  than  his  picture  of  a  dead 
canary.  It  is  a  more  touching  Elegy  upon  a  dead 
song-bird  than  one  may  hope  to  find  in  music  or 
in  poetry,  and  it  is  a  matchless  piece  of  drawing  and 
painting  besides.  Another  panel  with  which  I  am 
familiar  portrays  three  sheep  so  faithfully  that  a 
fellow  craftsman  once  hesitated  to  purchase  it  be- 
cause it  seemed  to  him  beyond  the  artist's  abilities 
as  a  draugjitsman. 

He  could  also  build  up  with  wonderful  verisimili- 
tude scenes  of  witching  splendor  like  the  Siegfried 
and  the  Rhine  Maidens  in  the  collection  of  the  late 
Sir  William  Van  Home  or  present  the  very  essence 
of  a  tale  from  Chaucer  in  a  painting  like  the  Con- 
stance in  the  same  collection.  In  The  Temple  of 
the  Mind  he  originated  an  idea  quite  as  romantic 
and  expressed  it  just  as  completely  and  attractively. 
Indeed  he  is  notable  for  his  invention  as  well  as  for 
the  magical  quality  of  his  color — the  invention  of 
new  incident  to  inform  historic  facts  and  romantic 
ideas  with  new  interest,  as  well  as  the  invention  of 
eloquent  and  attractive  compositions  in  which  to 
embody  them.  It  is  just  this  portion  of  something 
that  is  new  in  all  of  his  work,  the  original  part  of  it 
that  is  his  own  creatian,  that  is  the  measure  of  his 
genius  and  his  greatness. 

His  landscapes  are  the  least  successful  of  his 
works,  and  yet  even  in  landscape  he  has  done  some 

37 


fine  things.  Like  the  Sunset  Hour,  though,  they  are 
generally  those  in  which  the  human  element  is  in- 
troduced by  a  single  figure  or  more,  and  becomes,  in 
reality,  the  centre  of  interest  however  lovely  the 
landscape  may  be.  In  practically  all  of  his  pictures 
the  human  interest  is  present,  and  in  most  of  them  it 
is  paramount,  whatever  their  magic  of  mere  paint 
or  color,  their  suggestion  of  music  or  of  rhyme,  of 
time  or  of  place.  It  is  indeed  the  vital  thing  in  his 
art.  It  informs  the  most  imaginative  of  his  works 
with  meaning  so  evident  as  to  be  almost  unmistak- 
able. In  the  Forest  of  Arden  one  senses  it  in  the 
broken  limb  of  the  blasted  tree  repeating  the  ges- 
ture of  the  cavalier  who  woos  his  lady  in  the  fore- 
ground, he  dwelling  upon  the  beauty  of  Love's  de- 
mesne and  that  dumb  finger  of  earth's  dead  point- 
ing upward  as  if  to  recall  the  lasting  loveliness  of 
Heaven.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  misunderstood  as 
implying  that  Ryder  ever  consciously  attempts  to 
point  a  moral  in  a  picture  or  to  tell  a  story,  but  sim- 
ply to  indicate  how  truly  his  work  is  informed  with 
meaning  and  pregnant  with  suggestion — so  much 
so,  indeed,  that  from  the  best  of  it  one  gets  an  in- 
tellectual as  well  as  an  emotional  pleasure  of  the 
highest  sort.  In  the  picture  of  Pegasus  the  figure 
rides  the  white  winged  horse  out  of  the  radiant 
heavens  right  over  the  edge  of  the  world,  bringing 
back  to  us  today  the  message  of  the  gods.  What 

38 


Albert  P.  Ryder: 


Pegasus 


matters  it  if  the  winged  steed  is  badly  drawn  in  such 
a  picture?  Perhaps  the  spindly  legs  that  would 
scarcely  carry  its  weight  subconsciously  emphasize 
the  power  of  those  mighty  wings  outspread!  In- 
variably almost  Ryder  sacrifices  everything  un- 
necessary to  the  realization  of  an  idea  in  his  effort 
to  give  the  fullest  and  most  forcible  expression  and 
effectiveness  to  his  pictures.  Their  interest  and 
their  charm  sufficiently  prove  how  wisely  he  chooses 
between  the  vital  and  the  ineffectual  elements  in 
their  composition  and  execution. 


39 


AN  AMERICAN  PAINTER  OF 
THE  NUDE 


AN  AMERICAN  PAINTER  OF 
THE  NUDE 

MISS  LILLIAN  GENTH  is,  so  far  as  I  am 
aware,  the  only  American  artist  whose  whole 
career  evidences  a  deliberate  effort  to  earn  a  repu- 
tation as  a  painter  of  the  nude.  Some  canvases 
with  draped  figures,  several  portraits  and  a  few  in- 
timate landscape  studies,  undertaken  as  settings  for 
her  nudes,  constitute  the  remainder  of  her  product. 
In  practically  all  of  our  great  museums  and  private 
collections  of  American  paintings,  she  is  represented 
by  a  picture  of  the  nude.  These  paintings  have 
about  them  a  glamour  of  youth,  a  healthy  vigorous 
beauty  that  seldom  fails  to  arrest  attention  and  to 
reward  one  for  a  generous  consideration  of  all  that 
visible  portion  of  it  which  is  realized  in  the  me- 
dium. Her  choice  of  models  for  her  figures  is  con- 
fined to  the  gracious  and  winning  perfection  of 
girlish  bodies  which  she  habitually  uses  merely  as 
symbols  in  the  interpretation  of  romantic  ideas. 
This  gives  to  her  work  an  inescapable  individual 
character,  differentiating  it  from  that  of  other 
painters  of  the  nude  and  indicates  its  limitations  as 
well  as  its  merits.    Whoever  delights  in  the  buoy- 

43 


ancy  of  bright  color  and  the  suggestion  of  poetic 
thought  will  not  fail  to  find  satisfaction  in  her  can- 
vases. Her  figures  stand  forth  upon  the  painted 
stage  of  her  pictures  in  a  loveliness  as  altogether  re- 
moved from  reality  as  the  figures  that  interpret  for 
us  in  the  theatre  some  Shakespearean  scene  of  won- 
der and  delight. 

In  the  sense,  however,  that  a  figure  by  Degas, 
Daumier  or  Millet  seems  alive.  Miss  Genth^s  are 
generally  lifeless.  In  other  words,  the  figures  that 
people  her  pictures,  faultless  though  they  may  be 
at  times  in  drawing  and  intriguing  as  they  almost 
invariably  are  in  their  youthful  charm,  symbolize 
life  but  do  not  live.  Of  the  significance  of  life  as 
indelibly  recorded  by  nature  in  its  effect  upon  anat- 
omy, there  are  no  indications  in  her  figures  and  the 
absence  of  it  one  senses  in  a  definite  lack  of  that 
modicum  of  realism  that  makes  of  a  painted  figure 
a  living  presence.  The  tragedy  of  bent  forms  and 
misshapen  bodies,  the  endless  drama  of  the  human 
face,  has,  as  yet,  no  representation  in  her  work, 
which  more  nearly  approximates  today  the  popular 
portrait  painters'  presentation  of  personality  in  its 
attention  to  what  may  be  termed  the  inessentials  of 
feminine  prettiness,  as  to  both  line  and  color.  To 
reveal  upon  canvas  by  a  broken  body  the  tragedy 
of  life  or  by  a  face  of  woe  the  drama  of  sinful  love 
is  just  as  possible  as  to  paint  pleasant  subjects 

44 


whose  symbolism  permits  always  of  happy  faces  and 
perfect  bodies,  and  it  is  infinitely  greater  art.  All 
of  which  is  not  to  say  that  I  quarrel  with  Miss 
Genth's  choice  of  subject,  but  merely  to  suggest  a 
development  that  I  feel  reasonably  certain  must 
follow  in  her  art  if  she  continues  to  paint  the  figure. 
She  is  too  sensitive  to  life  and  too  little  bound  by 
convention  not  to  feel  and  to  see  its  rewards  and  its 
consequences  in  figures  of  sorrow  as  well  as  of  joy, 
and  to  endeavor  to  picture  life,  real  life,  as  well  as 
imaginary  and  invariably  lovely  fables  from  life. 
When  that  period  arrives  it  will  mark  another  and 
greater  period  in  her  art. 

A  brilliant  technician  Miss  Genth  unquestionably 
is.  The  bravura  of  her  brush  is  evident  in  all  of 
her  paintings,  and  yet  so  unerring  is  her  stroke  that 
it  may  be  said  never  to  jeopardize  her  effects.  This 
may  very  well  be  because  it  does  not  involve  her 
figures,  which  are  painted  with  sensible  deliberation 
and  extreme  care  in  an  effort  to  draw  them  to  the 
life,  however  removed  that  may  be  from  any  ap- 
proach to  realism.  As  a  method  of  painting  I  can- 
not help  but  feel  that  a  more  consistent  procedure 
would  produce  finer  results,  for  the  broad,  free  way 
in  which  her  backgrounds  are  brushed  in  seems 
often  to  emphasize  a  trifle  too  strongly  that  little  of 
something  approximating  precision  with  which  her 
figures  are  painted.    She  is  quick  to  see  the  artistic 

45 


possibilities  in  gracious  and  graceful  attitudes 
whenever  and  wherever  seen  and  however  momen- 
tary or  unusual,  and  thus  even  the  most  spiritual 
and  imaginative  of  her  nudes  preserve  in  pose  a 
relation  to  reality  that  satisfies  the  eyes,  yet  does  not 
interrupt  the  intellectual  enjoyment  of  the  poetry  of 
her  pictures. 

For  color  as  color  Miss  Genth  has  an  unerring  in- 
stinct, though  without  any  of  that  supersensitiveness 
which  would  surely  have  evidenced  itself  in  a  more 
deliberate  and  careful  manipulation  of  pigment  for 
its  own  sake,  resulting  in  passages  of  corresponding 
subtilty  and  appeal.  The  studied  effects  of  the 
artist  improvising  with  his  medium  are  not  to  be 
found  in  her  painting.  Both  her  color  and  her 
technic  are  altogether  individual  and  peculiarly  at- 
tractive. Her  handling  of  the  medium  and  her 
brushwork  are  very  personal  and  always  adapted,  it 
would  seem,  to  a  specific  effort  in  each  instance  to 
reproduce  the  feeling  as  well  as  the  appearance  of 
whatever  she  may  be  painting,  whether  earth,  sky, 
water,  foliage,  figure  or  flower.  Her  drawing  is 
not  faultless,  but  oftener  than  not  her  color  is  so  in- 
triguing as  to  make  one  overlook  little  inaccuracies 
there.  I  do  not  know  of  any  other  contemporary 
artist  who  more  delicately  and  successfully  re- 
creates upon  canvas  the  shimmering  beauty  of  light, 
the  silvery  haze  of  a  Spring  day,  a  Summer  blue  so 

46 


Lillian  Genth:    Sunlit  Dell 


soft  and  lovely  or  a  green  of  foliage  that  seems  so  al- 
ways tremulous  as  though  the  winds  of  heaven  were 
faintly  blowing  through  the  leaves. 

The  Fount  of  Life  and  the  Sunlit  Dell  are  two  of 
her  finest  figure  compositions.  The  former  is  a 
picture  fragrant  with  the  thought  of  youth,  fasci- 
nated by  the  mystery  she  cannot  fathom,  gazing 
into  the  quiet  waters  of  the  spring  of  life.  The  sun- 
light and  the  birds,  the  whispering  leaves  and  the 
caressing  winds  are  forgotten  for  the  moment  while, 
in  this  sylvan  spot,  she  searches  for  the  secret  hidden 
in  the  pool.  The  latter  is  more  elusive  in  its  in- 
tention and  escapes  exact  interpretation  except  as 
a  matter  of  feeling  that  the  shadowed  dell,  the  drip- 
ping foliage  with  the  sunlight  still  breaking 
through  so  as  to  touch  the  receding  figure  signify 
youth's  first  experience  of  sorrow.  In  these  two 
canvases  and  in  some  others  Miss  Genth  equals  her 
Adagio  in  the  National  Gallery  at  Washington,  a 
picture  of  the  nude  which  she  has  never  surpassed 
as  yet.  It  is  a  figure  finely  drawn  and  truly  en-, 
veloped  in  an  atmosphere  as  charged  with  the  real 
emotion  of  the  subject  as  a  Summer's  breeze  is 
with  the  fragrance  of  Summer.  As  a  nude  it  chal- 
lenges comparison  with  the  best  in  American  art 
and  takes  its  place  with  Benjamin  Fitz's  Reflection, 
Wyatt  Eaton's  Ariadne  and  the  rest  of  the  few 
really  great  ones. 

47 


ELLIOTT  DAINGERFIELD 


ELLIOTT  DAINGERFIELD 

PROBABLY  to  no  two  people  have  colors  the 
same  values,  and  the  work  of  any  painter  who 
is,  in  a  particular  sense,  a  colorist,  more  than  that 
of  other  artists,  is  sure  to  challenge  an  amount  and 
degree  of  criticism  that  can  be  pretty  accurately 
measured  by  its  importance.  And  the  colorist,  like 
the  poet,  generally  depends  upon  delicate  sugges- 
tions and  idyllic  ideas  for  the  beauties  which  fill 
his  canvases  with  visions,  as  of  the  gods  and  god- 
desses, nymphs  and  satyrs,  temples  and  shrines,  and 
the  wonder  of  a  world  made  beautiful  by  imagina- 
tion. Thus,  again,  from  another  point  of  view,  his 
work  suffers  from  a  criticism  it  can  never  escape, 
for  to  not  a  few  observers  the  subtile  beauties  of 
such  painting  pass  unseen.  That  ^'truth  is  beauty 
and  beauty  truth"  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  the 
obvious  are  more  important  than  the  hidden  beau- 
ties and  truths,  though  they  may  reach  and  satisfy 
more  people.  The  very  fact  that  the  obvious  in 
nature  and  in  life  is  understood  and  appreciated  so 
generally,  makes  it  all  the  more  important  that  the 
artist  concern  himself  with  the  elusive  glories  that 

SI 


escape  the  untrained  eye  and  must  be  lost  to  the 
world  except  for  his  labor. 

But  no  mere  painter,  whatever  his  technical  skill, 
has  ever  yet  or  ever  will  comprehend  the  secret 
beauties  or  truths,  either  of  nature  or  of  life,  suf- 
ficiently to  re-create  them  upon  canvas  with  that 
inescapable  touch  of  magic  which  any  painting 
must  have  to  stir  the  imagination  and  satisfy  the 
eyes  of  them  that,  having  eyes,  look  inwardly  as  well 
as  outwardly,  and  see  the  glories  beyond  as  clearly 
as  the  beauties  about  us.  Genius  only  is  capable 
of  such  a  task  and  genius  has  idiosyncrasies  of  its 
own  which  give  to  its  work  individuality,  some- 
times in  literature  a  style  as  strange  as  Whitman's 
or  in  painting  as  weird  as  Blakelbck's.  But  the 
work  of  genius,  however  touched  with  madness 
it  may  seem,  is  vital.  It  moves  with  splendid 
rhythm,  it  sings  with  a  voice  of  heavenly  beauty,  it 
throbs  and  glows  with  life! 

Mr.  Elliott  Daingerfield,  among  contemporary 
American  artists,  pursues  an  ideal  which  the  public 
imagination  very  often  fails  to  visualize,  and  his 
most  poetic  conceptions  indeed  seem  to  be  viewed 
by  the  general  public  as  through  a  glass  darkly, 
however  brightly  they  may  glow  with  that  richness 
of  color  which  at  times  suggests  the  old  masters. 
As  a  young  man  his  work  aroused  the  enthusiasm  of 
so  able  and  discriminating  a  judge  of  painting  as 

52 


George  Inness,  and  his  later  work  won  the  eager 
and  hearty  praise  of  another  great  critic  of  art, 
John  La  Farge.  Recently,  in  writing  about  "Na- 
ture vs.  Art,"  Mr.  Daingerfield  has  modestly  told 
a  story  which  goes  even  farther  as  an  illustration  of 
the  point  I  wish  to  make  in  connection  with  his 
work,  as  the  remark  of  the  great  surgeon  which  he 
quotes:  "I  want  a  picture  of  the  sea  or  the  moun- 
tains seen  in  a  better,  finer  way  than  I  can  see  it 
myself,"  was  intended  to  explain  the  satisfaction  he 
found  in  Mr.  Daingerfield's  work  and  illustrates 
the  very  real  and  deep  meaning  it  has  for  great 
natures  and  great  minds.  Compared  with  the  abil- 
ity to  stir  the  imaginations  and  to  fill  the  eyes  of 
such  men  with  revelations  of  the  wonder  and  the 
beauty  of  nature  and  of  life,  a  popular  success, 
such  as  might  be  won  by  the  effort  more  nearly  to 
gauge  one's  genius  to  the  understanding  of  the 
many,  could  never  bring  any  real  or  lasting  satisfac- 
tion to  an  artist  capable  of  great  things. 

I  do  not  know  that  any  of  Mr.  Daingerfield's 
pictures,  save  one,  a  Madonna  done  many  years  ago, 
has  ever  taken  a  prize  in  any  exhibition.  Some  of 
his  canvases  which  have  never  been  entered  in  com- 
petition and  seldom  shown  to  the  public  are,  how- 
ever, among  the  most  poetic  conceptions  in  Ameri- 
can art.  I  should  say  that  their  interest  as  well  as 
their  charm,  is  due  to  his  insight  into  the  glory  of 

S3 


nature  and  the  meaning  and  the  mystery  of  life — 
that,  and  the  individuality  of  his  color,  its  depth 
and  its  brilliance. 

His  landscapes  are  never  mere  pictures,  for,  with 
all  the  perfection  of  their  finish,  re-creating  as  they 
do  the  sentiment  of  the  place  as  well  as  the  scene 
itself,  it  is  the  sense  of  truth  that  is  in  them,  their 
meaning  I  may  say,  that  makes  them  really  vital. 
And  this  is  because  he  sees  a  meaning  in  our  land- 
scape and  fixes  it  in  his  paintings  of  it. 

With  a  subtile  perfection  of  emphasis  which  is 
estimated  very  accurately,  he  fixes  in  his  revelation 
of  it  the  feeling,  the  sentiment  or  the  meaning  of  a 
landscape;  it  may  be  by  a  shadow  or  by  a  touch 
of  light,  by  a  flower  or  by  a  figure,  or  by  several 
figures,  either  realistic  or  fanciful.  And,  after  all, 
the  meaning  is  not  invariably  obvious  but  only  sug- 
gested, as  it  is  in  nature  itself,  and  so  it  often  escapes 
the  eyes  of  the  superficial  observer,  just  as  it  remains 
undiscovered  in  the  world  about  us  by  thousands  of 
unobservant  people. 

Any  one  who  has  seen  his  painting  The  Waters 
of  Oblivion  must  realize  how  without  meaning  that 
mysterious  and  strangely  beautiful  little  landscape 
would  be  were  it  not  for  the  tiny  white-robed  figure 
standing  before  those  peaks  of  night  and  fairly  upon 
the  brink  of  the  unfathomable  pool  lying  at  their 
feet.    Except  for  that  touch,  with  all  its  miracle 

54 


Elliott  Daingerfield  :    The  Waters  of  Oblivion 

Collection  of  Dr.  Fred  Whiting 


of  rich  color,  the  canvas  would  be  a  monstrous 
thing,  not  simply  unreal  but  unnatural.  Yet  as  it 
stands  this  painting  is  one  of  the  most  vital  and 
most  beautiful  that  I  recall  by  an  American  artist, 
and  it  has  an  almost  inescapable  meaning,  the  whole 
suggestion  of  which  lives  in  that  little  white  figure. 

Sunset — Mists  and  Shadows  illustrates  very 
forcibly  how  literally  true  it  is  that  the  lasting  love- 
liness of  his  most  imaginative  revelations  of  the 
beauty  of  landscape  has  its  firm  foundation  in  a 
conscious  and  just  appreciation  of  the  necessity  for 
realizing  the  actual  aspects  of  a  scene  sufficiently  to 
be  always  convincing.  However  he  may  enrich 
with  color  or  with  imagination  the  visible  beauty  of 
a  scene,  its  essential  individuality  is  duly  em- 
phasized and  informs  the  poetry  of  his  landscape 
with  an  inevitable  and  unmistakable  resemblance 
to  the  reality  of  the  world  in  which  we  live. 

A  fine  example  of  his  offering  in  the  lyric  vein 
is  the  Arcadian  Huntress,  in  the  City  Art  Museum 
at  St.  Louis,  a  landscape  pervaded  by  a  perfume 
from  Parnassus,  in  which  Diana  is  glimpsed  again 
as  in  the  brave  days  of  old,  still  following  the  chase. 

Mr.  Daingerfield  visited  the  Grand  Canyon  a 
few  years  ago  and  ever  since  his  first  trip  thereto 
it  has  continued  to  be  the  inspiration  of  many  of  his 
most  important  canvases.  Beginning  with  the  ap- 
proximately realistic  rendering  of  its  shimmering 

SS 


glory  in  the  Opalescent  Morning,  which  turned  out 
to  be  but  a  prelude,  he  developed  the  motive  v^ith 
the  assurance  of  a  great  composer  improvising  upon 
an  enchanting  theme  and  produced  that  miraculous 
apotheosis  of  earthly  beauty,  the  City  That  Never 
Was,  w^hich  is  certainly  the  equal  of  a  fine  Turner, 
as  well  as  the  brooding  mystery  of  the  moonlit 
Tower  of  Silence,  that  mighty  rock  in  the  wilder- 
ness standing  alone  like  a  monument  to  a  vanished 
race  on  the  edge  of  the  world. 

His  paintings  of  this  locality  are  not  literal 
transcripts  of  any  scene  you  will  see,  but  marvelous 
re-creations  of  the  glowing  color  and  the  wild  gran- 
deur of  the  place — opal  mountains  and  crimson 
peaks  touched  with  mists  of  pearl  and  of  pink  and 
the  chasms  between  brimming  with  many-colored 
shadow.  He  has  put  into  his  renderings  of  it  the 
miracle  of  color  which  is  the  essential  glory  of  the 
Canyon  without  sacrifice  of  necessary  truth  to  na- 
ture in  his  drawing,  and  the  result  is  that  his  can- 
vases are  full  of  the  poetry  as  well  as  the  beauty, 
the  wonder  as  well  as  the  grandeur,  of  its  scenery; 
and  while  they  impress  one  with  its  sublimity  they 
thrill  one  at  the  same  moment  with  the  joy  of  its 
vibrating  light  and  the  peace  of  its  shadowed  mys- 
tery. 

In  his  figure  subjects  it  is  the  subtile  meaning  of 
a  gesture,  the  look  on  some  half-turned  face  or  a 

S6 


pose  perhaps  that  suggests  the  emotion  of  the  scene ; 
but  always  his  paintings  are  informed  with  some 
motive  sufficient  to  lift  them  beyond  any  peradven- 
ture  of  the  commonplace. 


57 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 


NATURE  AND  ART 

THE  work  of  no  artist  who  truthfully  reports 
the  facts  of  nature  is  negligible.  Whatever 
method  he  may  employ  in  the  accomplishment  of 
that  end  matters  not  at  all.  He  may  be  as  literal, 
as  precise  in  his  elucidation  of  detail  as  Hobbema, 
as  indefinite  as  Monet  or  as  preoccupied  with  the 
expression  of  his  moods  as  Tryon,  his  canvas  in  any 
case  will  be  worth  while.  Whatever  its  faults,  its 
one  conspicuous  merit  of  truth  is  sufficient  to  make 
of  it  something  of  real  value.  It  may  not  satisfy 
one,  it  may  lack  any  special  distinction  either  of 
composition  or  sentiment,  it  may  express  little  of  the 
spirit  of  a  place,  little  of  the  mood  of  a  moment 
charged  with  feeling,  nothing  of  the  personality  of 
the  painter,  but  the  one  thing  it  does  it  does  truth- 
fully. It  holds  a  mirror  up  to  nature  in  which 
we  see  an  accurate  reflection. 

The  sketches  in  oil  of  Wyant  and  the  water- 
colors  of  Winslow  Homer  are  of  this  order  of 
things.  Dissimilar  as  they  are  in  method  and  in 
style,  they  each  mirror  nature  in  a  way  almost  mi- 

6i 


raculous.  Homer  gets  his  effects  with  an  economy 
of  efifort  that  is  wonderful  for  anything  so  finished 
in  its  finality.  Wyant,  with  loving  attention  to  all 
the  precious  detail  of  his  subject,  particularizes  in 
his  studies  the  things  Homer  simply  suggests. 

There  are  painters  whose  best  work  never  goes 
farther  than  the  studies  of  such  men  and  who  yet 
must  be  reckoned  with  in  any  consideration  of  land- 
scape art  which  pretends  to  be  in  any  way  conclu- 
sive. And  the  ability  to  produce  such  work  is  after 
all  not  so  common  as  to  seem  simply  ordinary.  I 
doubt  if  it  ever  will  be,  for  it  implies  a  painstaking 
and  serious  study  of  landscape  painting  and  a  really 
admirable  knowledge  of  the  various  forms  of  nature 
and  of  nature's  coloring.  An  artist  with  such  an 
equipment  is  pretty  well  capable  of  doing  work 
that  is  far  enough  above  the  average  to  arrest  at- 
tention. His  trees  will  be  distinguishable — chest- 
nuts, elms,  birches,  maples;  his  shrubs  and  grasses 
no  less,  and  his  pictures  of  Italy  will  never  look  like 
American  landscapes  in  which  Italian  shepherds 
guard  their  sheep. 

Some  of  the  European  canvases  of  even  so  great 
a  landscape  artist  as  Inness  are  more  American 
than  foreign  so  far  as  the  landscape  itself  is  con- 
cerned— with  perhaps  no  more  than  a  peasant  driv- 
ing his  flock,  or  some  women  washing  clothes  in  a 
stream  to  tell  that  they  are  pictures  of  Italy  or  of 

62 


<  5 


France.  On  the  other  hand,  Wy ant's  Irish  sub- 
jects, with  nothing  but  the  look  of  the  land  to  dis- 
tinguish them  by,  are  unmistakable.  This  fidelity 
to  the  facts  of  nature  in  the  painting  of  landscape  is 
of  sufficient  importance  for  the  absence  of  it  to  af- 
ford an  opening  for  criticism  of  a  very  material 
sort  regarding  some  of  the  accepted  masterpieces  of 
contemporary  artists.  It  is  a  too  essential  part  of 
great  landscape  art  for  any  painter  ever  to  slight  it 
and  produce  a  truly  great  picture. 

The  knowledge  of  nature's  forms  and  the  faithful 
rendering  of  them  is  almost  as  necessary  to  the  land- 
scape artist  as  is  the  knowledge  of  anatomy  to  the 
painter  of  the  nude.  Too  frequently  he  tries  to 
work  without  ever  having  seriously  studied  the  an- 
atomy of  nature.  The  various  tree  forms  are  recog- 
nizable in  the  canvases  of  comparatively  few  con- 
temporary painters.  And  apparently  they  know 
the  rock  formations  but  little  better.  It  is  only  the 
more  evident  topographical  characteristics  of  a 
landscape  that  they  seem  to  get — the  sort  of  thing 
that  could  never  escape  the  notice  of  any  one  with 
eyes  to  see. 

Any  painter,  to  embrace  that  branch  of  art,  ought 
to  go  to  school  to  nature — study  the  trees,  the  rocks, 
the  earth,  and  learn  to  draw  and  paint  their  various 
forms  in  such  a  way  as  shall  be  distinguishable  to 
others  before  he  hangs  out  any  sign  of  his  pro- 

63 


fession  in  a  public  place.  When  he  has  mastered 
all  this,  finished  a  very  thorough  schooling  in  the 
great  out-of-doors,  and  learned  to  paint  nature  as 
she  is,  then,  even  if  he  fail  to  express  himself 
through  her  or  to  interpret  any  of  her  many  moods, 
he  will  nevertheless  be  able  to  add  something  of 
real  value  to  landscape  art — a  truthful  picture  of 
nature.  Later  he  may  learn  to  differentiate  the  es- 
sential from  the  trivial  facts,  to  sacrifice  the  unneces- 
sary detail  for  the  larger  aspects  of  a  scene  and, 
progressing  along  these  lines,  arrive  finally  at  some 
such  understanding  of  nature  as  will  enable  him  to 
express  some  one  or  more  of  her  many  moods  in  such 
a  way  as  to  produce  a  really  great  picture. 

PAINT  AND  PERSONALITY 

THE  personality  of  an  artist  as  it  affects  his  art 
is  an  interesting  study  in  itself,  and  if  in  land- 
scape it  is  a  more  elusive  quality  than  in  other  sub- 
jects it  is  no  less  effective.  Without  it  many  land- 
scapes of  unquestioned  merit  are  produced  through 
sheer  ability  to  see  and  to  paint  Nature  as  she  is. 
Often  enough  the  influence  of  a  painter's  personal- 
ity in  his  art  makes  for  something  other  than  truth. 
For  instance  the  light  in  Sorolla's  canvases  is  gen- 
erally rather  artificial  than  real,  more  like  flame 
than  the  sunlight.  But  the  light  in  the  great 
Spaniard's  work  is  its  chief  attraction,  and  it  is,  one 

64 


<  ^ 


may  say,  the  light  of  his  own  personality  in  as  much 
as  it  is  peculiar  to  his  work.  Thus  one  realizes 
how  the  personality  of  a  great  artist  expressing  it- 
self in  his  work  gives  to  whatever  he  does  a  certain 
quality  that  distinguishes  it  from  the  work  of  all 
others  just  as  the  '^style"  of  a  great  author  distin- 
guishes his  poetry  or  his  prose  from  that  of  all 
others.  But  only  a  great  author  or  a  great  artist 
may  ever  be  said  to  have  a  ''style,''  because  none 
other  is  ever  able  to  fully  express  himself,  his  per- 
sonality, in  his  work. 

There  are  many  good  writers  as  well  as  good 
landscape  painters  who  have  no  "style"  at  all;  they 
tell  good  stories,  paint  real  pictures,  but  with  noth- 
ing in  the  manner  of  their  making  to  make  them 
memorable,  no  hint  of  what  joy  or  sorrow  moved 
the  maker's  heart  nor  of  the  mood  that  was  upon 
him.  They  have  learned  to  do  their  work,  to  write 
stories,  to  paint  pictures,  but  unfortunately  not  yet 
how  to  express  themselves  in  their  work — and  until 
they  shall  they  may  never  achieve  a  "style"  that  will 
distinguish  them  among  even  their  contemporaries 
much  less,  in  the  future,  among  the  artists  of  all 
time. 

The  dreamy  loveliness  of  Tryon's  landscape  is 
never  likely  to  be  mistaken  for  the  work  of  another. 
It  is  the  expression  of  too  singular  a  personality. 
And  in  all  that  he  does  this  dreaminess,  this  thin 

6s 


strain  of  minor  poetry,  is  inescapable.  It  breathes 
in  the  budding  trees  of  his  Springtime,  it  blossoms 
in  the  stars  of  his  night  and  it  sings  in  the  sunshine 
of  his  Summer.  It  may  not  satisfy  you,  may  not 
be  food  for  your  thought  or  light  to  your  path,  but 
unless  you  are  blind  surely  you  can  not  fail  to  sense 
its  beauty. 

We  are  much  given  to  thinking  and  talking  about 
the  poetic  quality  of  both  Tryon  and  Francis 
Murphy,  a  quality  which  is  unmistakable  surely  in 
their  landscape  but  that  just  as  surely  is  not  the 
vigorous  epic  poetry  of  the  earth.  The  poetry  in 
their  pictures  is  mostly  their  own,  a  drenching  of 
the  fields  and  the  foliage  in  the  sunshine  or  twilight, 
the  mists  or  the  shadow  of  their  own  thought,  an 
interpretation  of  nature  through  the  atmosphere 
of  their  own  personality.  Their  canvases  have 
something  more  than  the  simple  truth,  a  faithful 
rendering  of  the  facts  of  nature,  to  recommend 
them;  they  shimmer  in  the  light  of  their  creators' 
thought,  fade  in  the  shadows  of  their  moods  or 
sparkle  with  the  splendor  of  their  fancy.  Always, 
however,  one  is  conscious  of  how  inevitable  are 
their  limitations,  prescribed  as  they  are  by  the  per- 
sonalities they  so  charmingly  express.  As  most  of 
us  have  a  bit  of  poetry  in  us,  the  effect  of  which  is 
to  add  something  of  beauty  to  our  understanding  of 
the  world  in  which  we  live,  it  is  not  to  be  questioned 

66 


that  it  is  less  of  an  accomplishment  adequately  to 
express  that  in  one  way  or  another  than  it  is  to  dis- 
cover ^^sermons  in  stones  and  books  in  running 
brooks."  In  other  words,  it  is  a  far  more  magnifi- 
cent landscape  that  expresses  the  epic  poetry  of  the 
earth  than  that  sings  the  song  of  any  artist  however 
great  a  poet  he  may  be. 

There  is  a  lot  of  feeling  in  contemporary  land- 
scape art,  but  too  much  of  it  is  personal  feeling  and 
not  enough  the  feeling,  the  sentiment,  the  mood  of 
Nature  herself.  Few  artists  seem  to  understand 
her,  as  few  in  proportion  as  there  are  men  who  have 
any  understanding  of  women,  and  without  a  deep 
understanding  of  her  and  of  her  moods  no  artist 
may  ever  expect  to  interpret  her  in  the  fullest,  finest 
sense — to  paint  for  us  a  portrait  of  her  in  which  we 
shall  see  not  simply  a  face  but  a  soul. 

THE  REAL  AND  THE  UNREAL 

SO  much  of  what  is  unreal  in  landscape  art  is 
extremely  interesting  and  lovely  that  one  may 
be  pardoned  for  exaggerating  its  importance. 
There  is  no  question  but  that  the  artist  whose  per- 
sonality pervades  his  landscape,  whose  pictures  ex- 
press his  moods,  produces  work  more  charming  and 
poetic  than  he  whose  ability  stops  at  the  point  of 
painting  simply  the  visible  aspects  of  a  scene.  Art- 
istic arrangement  in  landscape  helps  an  artist  to 

67 


express  what  he  has  to  say  and  helps  others  to  un- 
derstand him,  but  however  important,  however 
fine,  however  enchanting  his  message  may  be.  Na- 
ture herself  has  that  to  say  which  is  of  infinitely 
greater  importance  to  mankind.  That  this  fact  is 
not  more  generally  appreciated  is  natural  because 
so  few  understand  Nature. 

Human  nature,  however,  we  all  understand,  more 
or  less,  and  so  it  is  that  landscape  which  expresses 
the  personality  of  the  artist,  his  feeling,  appeals  to 
us  all.  We  enter  into  it  more  easily  because  of  the 
trail  he  has  blazed  and  we  are  apt  to  believe  that 
the  view  which  we  get  is  the  finest  there  is  to  be 
had.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  painter,  in  all  prob- 
ability, chose  his  course  with  particular  regard  for 
what  interested  him,  and  with  a  very  definite  idea 
of  expressing  himself,  in  pretty  much  the  same  way 
as  the  woodsman  would  cut  a  trail  as  directly  as 
might  be  to  a  fixed  point,  with  due  regard  for  mak- 
ing it  as  easy  as  possible  for  travel  and  as  pleasant. 
Few  of  us  are  able  to  really  enter  into  the  spirit  of 
a  landscape  except  where  a  path  is  beaten  for  us 
through  the  personality  of  the  artist,  as  few  as  there 
are  of  us  who  are  able  to  find  our  way  in  the  virgin 
forest  or  the  pathless  desert.  The  result  of  this  is 
that  whatever  of  beauty  is  visible  in  landscape  art  is 
that  which  we  see  through  the  personalities  of  the 

68 


artists,  and  most  of  whatever  feeling  we  get  out  of 
it  is  that  which  they  have  succeeded  in  putting  into 
it. 

Artists,  like  the  rest  of  us,  are  men  of  tempera- 
ment, of  sentiment,  of  emotion,  of  one  kind  or  an- 
other, and  they  generally  succeed  in  expressing  it 
in  their  work,  but  that  they  should  express  it  in  a 
landscape  that  is  as  singular  as  its  variations  are 
many,  and  that  serves  them,  with  but  few  excep- 
tions for  a  lifetime,  is  as  curious  as  it  is  regrettable. 
A  single  arrangement,  a  single  picture,  as  it  were, 
suffices  them  for  the  expression  of  practically  every 
emotion,  this  is  as  true  of  Corot  as  of  Tryon,  as  true 
of  Daubigny  as  of  Murphy.  Their  greatness  con- 
sists rather  in  doing  one  kind  of  landscape  superla- 
tively well  than  in  doing  many  kinds  in  a  manner 
to  mark  them  as  real  masterpieces.'  Their  pictures, 
whether  silvery  with  the  morning  light,  or  golden 
with  the  after-glow,  tremulous  with  the  winds  of 
Summer  or  carpeted  with  the  fallen  leaves,  are 
mostly  of  one  spot  or  of  places  very  much  alike. 
Atmosphere  is  the  stuff  whereof  their  masterpieces 
are  made,  the  landscape  as  it  were  a  mere  scaffold- 
ing on  which  are  hung  their  filmy  tapestries  of 
shadow  and  of  light.  And  very  beautiful  their  pic- 
tures are  too,  but  with  little  of  the  lofty  grandeur 
of  nature,  no  more  than  a  mere  suggestion  of  that 

69 


infinite  variety  of  beauty  which  is  all  about  us  in 
this  world  in  which  we  live.  Looking  at  one  of 
their  pictures  and  noting  its  similarity  to  all  the 
others,  one  wonders  if  perhaps  that  particular  land- 
scape is  the  only  one  the  artist  found  lovely,  only 
to  realize  in  a  moment  that  even  that  loveliness  in 
their  eyes  was  probably  very  much  a  matter  of  their 
success  in  glorifying  it  in  the  atmosphere  of  their 
own  emotion.  Their  ability  in  doing  just  this  sort 
of  thing  is  prodigious,  their  mastery  of  atmosphere 
marvellous  indeed.  With  anything  so  subtile,  so  in- 
substantial, so  elusive,  to  express  so  much — for  they 
do  express  a  wide  range  of  feeling — is  an  accom- 
plishment of  considerable  importance  in  itself. 

But  some  of  us  at  times  get  just  a  little  tired  of 
the  artists,  their  moods,  their  emotions,  the  atmos- 
phere of  their  personalities,  and  wish  for  something 
more  of  art — pictures  with  the  large,  deep  feeling 
of  the  great  out-of-doors  in  them,  landscapes  that 
express  the  moods  of  nature,  the  wistful  tenderness 
of  the  Spring,  the  loneliness  of  the  moorlands,  the 
peace  of  the  little  hills  lying  in  the  sun  or  the 
shadowed  mystery  of  the  night. 

Without  forgetting  one's  self  one  may  never  hope 
to  win  one's  way  to  Nature's  heart,  to  really  get  to 
know  her,  to  understand  her  well  enough  to  even 
begin  to  express  any  one  of  her  various  moods,  and 
until  one  can  do  this  he  may  never  hope  to  do  the 

70 


best  in  landscape  art,  for  the  greatest  pictures  of 
that  sort  are  those  that  express  her,  her  moods,  not 
the  feelings,  the  personalities  of  artists. 


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